September 25, 2017

Is Interactive Content Marketing The New Blogging?

Marketers seek content that an audience not only consumes, but is enjoyed and encourages an action. However, internet users are more savvy than ever and want content that both excites and informs, only then are they likely to recommend a brand, share content, or make a purchase.

When done correctly, interactive content could provide a middle ground, but is this a substitute to the classic blog post or just an added extra?

Examples Of Interactive Content

• Quizzes
• Assessments e.g. personality tests
• Polls and surveys
• Calculators and generators
• Contests
• Downloadable content
• Image galleries
• Infographics

Interactive Content Done Right: The Buzzfeed Case Study

 

‘96 per cent of users who start Buzzfeed quizzes finish them’

and

‘one Buzzfeed quiz has been viewed more than 22 million times’

 

There is no better example for the possibilities of interactive content than Buzzfeed. Founded in New York in 2006, it now has more than 18 offices around the world, employing 1,300 people, and publishing more than 700 pieces of content a day. More so, 50 per cent of Buzzfeed’s visitors are aged 18 to 34 and 70 per cent of its traffic is mobile.

How did Buzzfeed do it? The independent digital media company combined timely news content, quizzes and video content published by thousands of engaged contributors to grow its audience to more than 200million monthly unique visitors. In short, their content is made by readers for its users.

Benefits Of Interactive Content Marketing

• Encourages user engagement
• Bold, colourful and eye-catching
• Helps collect user data
• Provides remarketing opportunities
• Offers new ways to tell your brand/product story
• Show your product or service in action

The State Of Content Marketing And Interactivity As We Know It

• Interactive content generates 4-5x more pageviews than static content (LinkedIn)

• 88 per cent of B2B marketers said at least 10-30 per cent of their content would be interactive by 2018 (DemandGen Report)

• 93 per cent said interactive content is somewhat or very effective at educating the buyer, versus just 70 per cent for static content (Inc)

Interactive content is somewhat of a hot topic in content circles at the moment, however isn’t as common as the traditional blog post… yet.

In May 2017, SnapApp reported 53 per cent of content marketers now use interactive content to influence the buyer’s journey. Why not more? Well, the main issue holding content marketers back at the moment is time and resources. Interactive content simply takes longer to create and demands more resources than a standard blog post – something that many smaller businesses don’t have access to.

Despite this, many new online tools are helping marketers on a tight budget jump on the interactive bandwagon and interactive content use is on the rise. Carto helps create visually pleasing data-rich maps, whereas sites such as Apester and Qzzr allow you to make basic, embeddable quizzes, all of which can be featured on reactive webpages for desktop and mobile users.

Want To Get Interactive?

Whether you’re an interactive content marketing novice or have all the tools but want to brush up on your website content strategy, we’ll have something for you at our events. Sign-up today to hear about the latest innovations, biggest trends and best practice.